“Catherine?” Harry said, lowering his chin. “His father’s mistress enrolled him in a church school?”
The word “mistress” grated, but it is what their mother had called her and what the situation painted Catherine to be. “She played the part of a mother for Duncan.” She paused and shook her head. “I cannot make sense of it, truth be told. She moved in with them when Duncan was five years old and was Duncan’s sole support after his father’s death six years later. She taught him to read, gave him his first lessons on factoring, and enrolled him in school. She owed him nothing, yet she was devoted to him for the rest of her life.”
“Really?” Harry said, sitting up and clasping his hands between his knees. “How very un-Mayfield of her to be devoted to a child, let alone a child that was not her own.”
Hazel laughed, in part to cover her discomfort at sharing Duncan’s personal history with someone she did not entirely trust. “Mother was devoted to you and Hannah.”
She’d spoken the words lightly, but they fell like stones, and Harry’s smile fell with them. “She doted on us to make up for Father’s meanness,” he clarified. “Which is not exactly the same thing.”
The silence arched and twisted for a moment, and Harry must have felt it too because he rescued her from having to respond.
“I really am sorry for the part I’ve played in your hardships, Haze. I have not been good to you the way a brother should have been. Not when we were young, not when we were grown. I genuinely hope we can become more to one another than we’ve been before.”
She could not keep the skepticism out of her expression, but she nodded her willingness to consider it, then felt cruel for hesitating. Had Harry ever hurt her? He’d been irresponsible in matters that influenced her life, but how much of the distance between them was due to their limited interactions and her own jealousy of what seemed like excess he did not appreciate? If that were true, then the trouble between them was not so much his doing as it was her perception.
Harry smiled and spread his hands as though making a peace offering, which was exactly what he was doing. “And are we not lucky to have the chance to build something new? Falconridge is not so very far away, and I would like very much for Sabrina and Duncan to meet.”
Duncan!
Hazel looked at the clock. It was 5:41. She pushed up from her chair, which caused Harry to jump to his feet, his eyebrows drawn together in alarm. She took a lurching step, but then realized there was nothing she could do to stall this meeting.
“What is wrong?” Harry asked, his eyes wide.
“Before Duncan gets home—he’ll be here in ten minutes or less—I need to . . . prepare you to meet him.”
Harry’s eyes shot up his forehead. “Well, that is a rather ominous introduction.”
That is why Scotland is so very vindictive of Britain’s rule.”
Cousin Harry—Hazel’s twin brother, though they looked nothing alike—nodded as he took another bite of his pudding, an excellent date cake with lemon glaze. Cousin Harry had proven a good listener, which was a talent Hazel had not alerted Duncan to expect.
“Frankly,” Duncan continued, “I am impressed with your interest in this topic, Cousin Harry. Hazel had made it sound like you did not have a great deal of interest in intellectual pursuits.”
Cousin Harry looked at Hazel sitting at the other end of the table that sat six, though it had only actually sat six people the one time the vicar and his wife and Mr. and Mrs. Randall had come to dinner a few weeks earlier.
“Did she?” Cousin Harry seemed to be asking the question of Hazel though Duncan was the one who had been carrying the conversation. Hazel had eaten rather quietly tonight. Duncan hoped he had not left her out. He wished he’d thought to ask sooner.
“She also said she was the more attractive of the two of you, but I find that a difficult comparison to make as the two of you look so very different. It would take specific preference for one type of coloring over the—”
Cousin Harry covered his mouth with his napkin but then burst out laughing a few seconds later.
Duncan stiffened and focused on his pudding as anxiety halted his confidence. He had wanted to make a good impression. He began pulling his thoughts inside himself. Cut a bite, put it in your mouth, chew three times, swallow. Cut a bite, put it in your mouth—
“He is not laughing at you, Duncan,” Hazel said. “He is laughing at me.”
“It is unkind to laugh at people,” Duncan said, still looking at his plate.
“He does not mean it poorly,” she explained.
Duncan risked looking up between them, wishing he could better understand expressions. Hazel was smiling though, and he trusted she would not be laughing at him as she had never laughed at him before. Or told him false. Cousin Harry was still laughing, enough that he seemed to be having a difficult time catching his breath. In Duncan’s life, laughter usually came at his expense.
“Forgive me, Duncan,” Cousin Harry said, shaking his head and waving a hand through the air. “I mean no unkindness, I assure you.”
Duncan returned to his pudding, unconvinced, and now wondering if Cousin Harry had been laughing at him silently the whole meal.
It had been Cousin Harry who said he’d hired a Scotsman as his new steward, but then he’d known so little about the Picts. If he hoped to make a good impression on his new employee, having a solid grasp of the history of their two countries’ disagreements was important. He’d seemed genuinely interested when Duncan had begun explaining the invasion of the Romans upon the order of Julius Caesar that lead to the initial conquering.
However, Duncan also knew he sometimes remedied his own discomfort by speaking too much on a topic of his own interest and not properly engaging other people in the conversation. Had he done that and not noted the signals that the company was growing bored with his conversation? He was embarrassed to think he’d done this with Hazel’s brother. Good impressions were incredibly difficult to control since it was at the other person’s discretion to judge one’s actions.
“My brother has repulsive manners, Duncan.”
Cousin Harry snickered again and raised the napkin to his mouth.
“Perhaps it will help if I explain why this is humorous,” Cousin Harry said, leaning forward.
Duncan risked a glance, though he did not meet Cousin Harry’s eye.
“Hazel told you she was more attractive than I, which put her in a superior position despite the assessment being a purely subjective one since beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Duncan considered that and remembered marking the comment as clever back when Hazel had said it on their first meeting at Howard House.